Review of the Paid Survey

This site is sooo much FUN! I first discovered this site some time in August, and immediately joined up to participate in the competition they were running then, called The Ransom Note. (The snippets of the ransom note had been taken from the logos of websites around the world, and we had to find them!) It was lots and lots of fun, though at times EXTREMELY frustrating! - and I even won a runners-up prize for my efforts! Ok, enough of my exploits, let us talk about the site itself...

Description of the Site

This is an Australian site, but is open to everyone older than 16. Signing up is the usual simple procedure; you supply a username and e-mail address, they then send you a confirmation email for you to link to the site and complete your profile. Job done, you are now a registered Spider.
The main description of the site is that of a Paid To site. As with other Paid To sites you have to complete certain activities, for which you are paid/rewarded. In the case of this one, you are rewarded for completing surveys, questionnaires, tests, quickies and trials, and for rating websites (of your choice!). You also have the opportunity to win rewards by playing games and entering competitions.

Layout and Navigation

The site is nice and simple and well laid out; not a lot of graphics and no flashing or pop-ups (hooray!). Oh and don't panic, there are no pictures of real spiders anywhere on the site - although the logo is a sweet little cutesy cartoon spider! As with Ciao, the navigation couldnt be simpler; using the tabs along the top of the page and the sub-menus listed down the left-hand side of the page. There is also a Site Map to help make things a little clearer. The speed of the site is good too, due (in no small measure) to the fact that Australia is 9 hours ahead of us. Logging in at a different time, means that the site is not clogged up with traffic, a definite advantage when doing the competitions.

Contacts

As I said before, there is the Spider Chat room for chatting to other spiders and the Spider Voice message board where you can review websites of your choice. Contacting the Spider Panel and the powers that be couldn’t be simpler; email the relevant section and await a response. Responses from said powers are pretty quick and they are very helpful and friendly.

The Rewards

For each of the activities you complete, you are awarded various amounts of spiderpoints, (here on known as SP). Typically; surveys, quickies, trials, tests and questionnaires are worth from 1 to 10 SP, and Full Website Ratings are worth 20 SPs. They even start you off by giving you SP’s for completing your profile on sign-up.
The purpose of these SPs is two-fold; Firstly, the more SP’s you earn, the higher-ranking spider you become. (Higher-ranking spiders receive more SPs per survey completed, than the lower-ranking ones).
Secondly, your SPs can be redeemed for one (or more) of the rewards available.
...and the bit you've all been waiting for...

Payments

Once you have accumulated your hard-earned SPs, you can exchange them for the reward or rewards of your choice. The rewards are divided into three categories; Gifts, Vouchers and Cash.
GIFTS These vary in amount of SPs required, according to the gift, of which there are two kinds; one for charity and one for you. You can either make a donation to charity, or you can treat yourself to one of the gifts available at that time, (the list of gifts changes every two weeks or sooner if the items sell out, subsequently the amount of SPs required will also change). Currently, the minimum amount required for the cheapest gift is 12 SPs, and the maximum required is 176 SPs, with various amounts in between.
EVOUCHERS These can be used in exchange for goods at on line stores (listed on site) and vary in value from AU$35 (200 SPs) to AU$150 (700 SPs).
CASH At present, the two choices are, cheque (which unfortunately is only available to Australian spiders) or deposit into your Paypal account. Again, the amounts vary, from AU$50 (300 SPs) to AU$200 (1000 SPs).

Join now.

This is an excellent cash reward survey site. You earn $1.00 to $3.00 for each survey you complete. A great feature of this free paid survey site is if you refer your friends you make $2.00 for every survey they finish, and you make $1.00 for every survey completed by your friend's referrals. You will typically receive two to three surveys a week. Make sure you complete the member portraits; although you aren't compensated for doing the member portraits they allow SurveySavvy to have a better idea of who you are and will be able to send you more survey invitations. Member portraits can take 5 minutes to 20 minutes to finish.

SurveySavvy is a division of Luth Research, which has been in the market research field since 1977. They also conduct focus groups for the San Diego area and telephone interviews.

Each survey site we review we give them a value from one to five based on:

Total number of surveys we are invited to.
How much we are paid for each one we complete.
How promptly they send our check.
Five is the greatest and one is awful.
SurveySavvy earned: 4

You will usually receive two to three surveys a week. You earn $1.00 to $3.00 for each questionnaire. You can request your payment at anytime and will receive a check in the mail within 4-6 weeks.

It is a great site to promote. You can invite your friends and relatives to join and each time they finish a survey you earn $2.00. This might not sound like much but it really adds up over time especially since you don't have to do that much work for it. You can really make some extra money just by referring people to surveysavvy, you don't even need to take the surveys if you don't want to. Currently we have about 2870 referrals and are averaging about $100 to $125 a month.

Join SurveySavvy

Are paid surveys a scam? I have seen this question asked so many times. Let me tell you the short answer first. No, paid surveys are not a scam. You can make extra money by answering market research surveys whether they are though the mail, telephone, or online. The long answer is more difficult to explain.

Basically, things started out well for market research firms. Before the Internet people would take paid surveys either through the mail or through the telephone, and would receive their payment in the mail. Then the Internet came and companies saw a huge opportunity to cut costs by using the Internet to conduct their research.

A research company is only as good as the number of panelists they have. So in order to recruit new panelists they started affiliate programs. Affiliate programs work like this; Company A pays person B, X amount for an action performed by a customer.

Some greedy people got wind of marketing paid surveys, and decided to charge customers to access a list of market research companies. This is the scam part. You can find free lists on many websites including this one. You should never pay anyone for an opportunity no matter how good it sounds.

Paid surveys are not a scam. You can make extra money by taking online surveys. You should not pay a website to find a list of market research companies.